Opinion: Campaign India Digital Media Awards is here

Launched in 2010, Campaign India’s Digital Media Awards (DMA) is  back. The DMA honours the best in digital marketing and communications in India, highlighting breakthrough works that demonstrate creativity and effectiveness across the industry.

The DMA recognises digital marketers and their agencies for work in promoting products and services and have become the premier annual event for the digital marketing industry.

Being on Facebook and Twitter is considered a de facto given. It has become similar to what websites used to be a couple of years ago.  India has been fortunate to adopt the latest trends in digital media – almost instantaneously – as they are being rolled out all over the world. In a highly social and mobile world, digital campaigns are aplenty and the best ones are raved about while the worst ones fizzle away or are trashed.

Digital:  staying relevant

Gone are the days when consumers called up the company boardline to complain or rant about their service. With the entire world wide web as their audience, consumers are delighted to key in their sentiments, often unedited.

Apps are the new gateways. Typing a website’s URL is cumbersome for some in these short attention spans. Marketers and content owners want to be at the fingertip of their audiences, and the Apps ecosystem has exploded, and how!

Digital advertising has started adding a new dimension to the ad world. Both in terms of monetising content; as well as innovation.

Everyone agrees that search engine and social media marketing have proven themselves powerful awareness-making machines, creating buzz for less media money investments.

Digital:  making connections

Acknowledging the changing digital landscape in mind, Campaign India has also revamped its annual Digital Media Awards categories this year to reflect the evolving medium’s requirements. While new categories like Apps and Online PR have been introduced, certain award categories have been consolidated.

DMA:  2010 and 2011

Readers of Campaign India will recall, CreativelandAsia was the big winner at the Campaign India Digital Media Awards 2011 presented by BBC.com, being awarded four golds and two silvers. The agency received the newly introduced Platinum Award for the agency with the maximum number of winning entries.

In 2010, with four Golds, two Silvers and a Bronze, Mindshare was named Digital Agency of the Year at the first Campaign India Digital Media Awards, presented by BBC.com. The media agency won its Golds for its work on “Goodmorningheart.com” in the category Website – FMCG, ‘India says “My heart is healthy or at least I know if it’s not”’ in Best Loyalty Campaign, ‘2 million sq.cm of paper saved – What an Idea Sir ji!’ in Media Innovation, and ‘Slumdog Millionaire Tagged on Facebook’ for Marketing of Films. The two Silvers were for Best Integrated for Idea and “Coming to Life with a code” in Media Innovation. The Bronze was for Goodmorningheart.com in online advertising.

DMA 2012 is here

After a steady start in 2010,  in 2011, a total of 19 agencies were on the winner’s list, with the number of entries rising to over 300 last year.

Entries for the DMA will be open soon. For a full list of categories and more details about Campaign India Digital Media Awards 2012, please log on to  www.campaignindiadma.in.